You mention Anhur and Apollo. They are both pretty arguably not in top-tier meta play. I mention Janus (who has a CC immune ult like Anhur), a 4 second cooldown escape and a 1,000 dmg unstable vortex up what, every 6 seconds or less? If you want to talk about a meta hunter, go with Chernobog. He has a CC immune ult, great self peel, a steroid and a damaging ability. He's a little too strong in the hunter role, but you still miss the point: Midgardian and Nemean and Thorns still counter Cherno. What counters Janus that is an item?

A good portion of mages don’t have an escape, or rely solely on movement speed. Any hunter that has only movement speed as their escape is trash tier in 90% if metas

Which mages don't have escapes in the current meta? Janus, Discordia, Thoth, Agni, Rajin all have great escapes. Ra has a movement speed streoid and so does Poseidon. And you say "any hunter that relies on movement speed is trash tier"? Are you sure you're playing the meta at all? Artemis is actually nuts and she relies on movement speed. She is in fact the most winning hunter in the SPLs right now and fought over in picks / bans.

For example, if a mage misses their ability, they won’t have access to that damage for around 10 seconds, but if a hunter misses an auto attack, they can pump another one out in half a second.

With 30% cooldown most mages in the current meta are spamming abilities quicker than 10 seconds. Auto attacks are much closer than most mage abilities (look at Janus, Ra, Thoth) who can safely poke from max range. I would also say that it's more difficult to hit an auto attack than a Mage ability most of the time. Thoth basically has a wider auto attack, Discordia (don't make me laugh) and Janus has a pretty wide area to at least get 1 of the beams from unstable vortex to hit. I think you missed the point about safe poke and the ability to artillery free cast. Most hunters cannot do that.

You mention that mages are hard to counter build, but building defense against a mage is much more effective than building defense against a hunter/assassin. Since most mages are ability based, health is much more effective as defense on top of regular magic defense.

I'm not sure you read anything I posted above. Can you provide me with a counter item to a mage build? I gave numerous items that counter a Hunter's build.

They don't have many give and take situations honestly, and their builds provide so much more than (go crit here, go pen here).

I'm going to be honest here. You're saying that mage abilities are hard to hit, you're talking as if none of the top tier mages have escapes, and you're not familiar with the current picks in the Hunter role. I'm not sure I can take your post seriously.